Man Posed as Belgian Veterinarian on Silver Singles Site to Scam Woman Out of $1.2M

A Texas man who tricked a woman into believing she was dating a Belgian veterinarian, then convinced her to send $1.2 million so that he could escape from a deal-gone-wrong in Dubai, was sentenced Tuesday to three years in federal prison.

Rotimi Oladimeji, 38, was one of several co-conspirators in Nigeria and the United States who approached the victim on "Silver Singles," an online dating site for people 50 and over, in 2019, the U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Missouri announced.

Oladimeji, helped by at least two other men, claimed he was a Belgian national living in St. Louis, where the woman also lived. The men created a fake LinkedIn profile several months earlier in order to make "the veterinarian" appear more authentic.

The supposed animal behaviorist promised to meet with the victim on several occasions, but never showed up. At one point, the victim was stranded at the Missouri Botanical Garden waiting for the fictional date.

Then in October 2019, the supposed veterinarian claimed he was in Dubai and needed $15,000 for an "urgent business issue."

Over the next several months, the scammers pleaded for more money, telling the victim the vet would be trapped in the United Arab Emirates unless she could pay his way out.

The funds were then split among the three co-conspirators as well as other suspected scammers in Nigeria.

Oladimeji last year pleaded guilty to two counts of mail fraud, two counts of wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.

His partners, Olumide Akrinmade and Adewale Adesanya, will spend 15 months and four years respectively in prison for their roles in the scheme. The perpetrators were also ordered to pay back all of the money they stole from the unnamed victim.

On its website, Silver Singles says it "employs an entire team of agents whose main task is to check and verify each and every profile created on our site."

"Every partner proposal you receive has been stringently checked by a human and verified. This process removes the majority of these rogue accounts," the site's online dating safety page reads.

Silver Singles' parent company, Spark, did not immediately respond to The Messenger's request for comment.